I feel really weird defending Lyndon Johnson, but I think that the charge of “warmonger” is inaccurate and unfair. Bob McNamara was the warmonger. Johnson considered the Vietnam War and all the baggage that came with it to be one huge pain in the ass. It torpedoed his domestic agenda. He wanted to be remembered for his — forgive my snickering — Great Society, War on Poverty, and all that crap. He trusted that McNamara and the Pentagon were doing their best to end the war, not prolong it. He was a Hillarian socialist, a Clintonian meddler, and a Carterian do-gooder with a temper the size of Texas. But he was not a warmonger.
None of the “classic” presidents had to deal with the kinds of media scrutiny, and to some extent the tensions that the current crop have been faced with. And it’s too soon to gauge how the most recent ones will be viewed by history.
I’m surprised that Wilson made the list of noble former presidents, given that he was widely damned as an appeaser and later as a rigid, moralistic pontificator both here and abroad (Teddy Roosevelt* loathed him, for one thing). And toward the end of his time in office his wife was pretty much running the show (arguably contrary to the law) because of his poor health.
*Think Saddam would be trying any monkey business if T.R. was in office?
The OP sounds eerily similar to Confessions of a Serial President Hater.
A&E had a special on this topic.
They had Franklin Pierce and Buchanon at 1 and 2, respectively, due to their decisions or lack thereof in setting up the Civil War. Warren Harding and Grant obviously have to be on the list for the corruption issues. And no list of bad, bad presidents would be complete without tricky Dick Nixon.
Best was (as I recall) Lincoln, Washington then FDR.
None of the Presidents since Reagan really rate one highly in one way or another in the long view as the each did as much good as bad. Just mashed into the middle. Sorry partisans. 
That would be a good idea.
Another is Instant Runoff Voting, where you rank the candidates according to your preference. This would eliminate much of the “spoiler effect” of third party candidates, allowing people to vote for someone like Ralph Nader as their first choice and, say, Al Gore as their second choice. If Nader does not get enough votes in the first round, that vote would go to Gore.
We also need campaign finance reform.
Yeah, yeah, yeah and they ate babies too. These men all had flaws, but they had extraordinary skills as well. Being an effective politician is often a thankless and extremely difficult job, and running the most powerful, and of the most complex nations on the face of the planet is a task that no one can undertake and emerge unscathed in the long run. Many of these men made bad decisions at one time or another in their presidencies, but they also made a lot of good decisions as well and overall the US is stronger for it.
Your idiotic broad bush characterizations of their personalities is so numbingly stupid in comparison to your normally reasoned approach, I’ve got to imagine you are being held hostage and someone is posting on your account. With respect to the “giants of old” fantasy you seem enamored of, if you will read some presidential histories you will see that these men also had significant personal flaws and made bad decisions as well, but the good things they did in their stewardship of the nation has outweighed their personal failings over time viewed through the lens of history.
C’mon, in spite of his other faults he’s reasonably physically fit.
Yeah, well, you’re a warmongererer.
I vote every time, too. Hunter Thompson said being told you have an obligation to vote is like being told you have an obligation to buy a car, but have to choose between a Ford and a Chevy.
Quick, which 20th Century president has the greatest record on civil rights legislation?
Civil “rights” legislation? In my opinion, whatever law prohibits a peaceful honest man from pursuing his own happiness in his own way with respect to his property — even if he is a bigot — is ethically jejune.
Hola!
Jefferson-Slave owner.
Lincoln-Comprimise politician. Man with mental problems with an insane wife. Killed a lot of soldiers to “preserve the union”.
Wilson-Warmonger (Got the US involved in an unnecessary European conflict called WWI)
Roosevelt-Cheated on his wife, started the ugly path of liberalism and gross government spending. Not to mention Social Security.
Now, this is I slamming the “best” Presidents that America has ever had.
SENOR
You tell 'em brother! That damn crook who ended the Vietnam war, decreased tension with the U.S.S.R., visited China and decreased those tensions, helped Isreal and ended the draft. Oh, I forgot, that scumbag was the man in office during our first landing on the moon! the bastard!
It’s not that these people were blameless. It’s the question of how history remembers them. If you have to sum up a President in half a dozen words, or for one thing, how do you sum them up? You don’t say that “cheating on his wife” was the most memorable thing FDR did; you say the New Deal or winning WWII. You don’t say Jefferson was a “slave owner”, you say that he wrote much of the Consitution and Bill of Rights, or that he made the Lousiana Purchase.
What do you say about Richard Nixon? That he was a crook.
What do you say about Carter? That he was ineffectual.
What do you say about Clinton? That he was impeached for sexual impropriety.
What do you say about Ford? That he couldn’t walk (or fart) and chew gum at the same time.
That’s the summation provided by Dame History, not just me.
We’ve got us a buncha losers.
Sure, if the histories you’re reading are written by editorial cartoonists and/or hack comedians…
May I suggest getting your history lessons from a historian. Preferably one with a relatively small agenda. (ha!)
Well, the times make the man.
The first presidents had a country to make from scratch. Lincoln had the Civil War. Teddy R. had the closure of the frontier, the end of the Industrial revolution and America’s first turning its eyes abroad. FDR had the depression and WW2.
What did your guys have? They had a large, stable, powerful nation, and all they had to do was to clean up some messes. They didn’t have fewer faults than their predecessors. They weren’t great because they had nothing great to do.
As an American, you should think of it as the price of success.
Yeah, I know. I was just playing devil’s advocate. I think that it’s the time element that’s lacking here. It’s not that we don’t have great men occassionally being president, it’s that alot of time has to pass before we get the detached, historical view. I should guess that one or 2 generations needs to pass. I was a little kid during Nixon’s administration and took to reading up on his good points just so mom and I had something to debate at the dinner table. All in fun.
You have a point, C K Dexter Haven. It doesn’t apply to Reagan, though. “*Won cold war, reduced government, fixed economy” * is 7 words, not 6, but it’s a pretty good list, at least on the surface. His problem is that he’s such a polarizing figure – too conservative for some liberal historians to apreciate.
Bush 43 will be judged historically on his accomplishments, not his (supposed) IQ. Time will tell what those accomplishments are.
Eisenhower and Truman were portrayed as not too smart when they were President. However, their stature has grown over the years, as their accomplishments came to be more appreciated.
At least you didn’t have Maggie Thatcher governing you for eighteen years. I don’t know what madness gripped the country so that she was continually re-elected. She was a mad old witch.